I've been in
Ferguson since November 22, and I don't think a day has gone by where
there hasn't been a protest, most often multiple protests. There may
be one at the Ferguson police station, and another in the St. Louis
Shaw neighborhood, just south of the city center, or perhaps on one
of the campuses: Washington University, St. Louis University, the
University of Missouri St. Louis, and/or out in Clayton or West
County.

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At 2pm, on
Wednesday, December 10 -- International Human Rights Day -- 70
medical students at the Washington University Medical School
conducted a moving protest and die-in, right in the main atrium
entrance to the university. This was part of the nationwide
#WhiteCoats4BlackLives protest that reportedly took place at some 80
different medical schools across the U.S.

Monday, December
8, 250 people packed a meeting of the Ferguson Commission, formed by
Governor Jay Nixon to look into the social and political conditions
behind the "unrest" and make recommendations so the St.
Louis area can become a "stronger, fairer place for everyone to
live." The meeting took place in the Shaw neighborhood, near
where 18-year-old Vonderrit Myers Jr. was murdered by police. Things
went as planned until St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson began reading
his remarks. The room erupted with protest and boos and Dotson was
forced to stop speaking. Some people left, fed up with the meeting.
Others stuck around, hoping this state-led process might work.

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The Sunday
before, 80 people protested in the Shaw area against the St. Louis
Police Department's "finding" on Friday that they committed
"no criminal wrongdoing" when they shot and killed
Vonderrit Myers Jr. on October 8. (The county prosecutors have
supposedly not yet decided whether or not to charge Myers' killer.)
Twenty others protested police murders at a performance of Annie at
the Fox Theater attended by hundreds of parents and children. "They
got to see what's going on in the world," one demonstrator told
the St. Louis Post Dispatch (December 8, 2014). "They're going
to be thinking about it, and they're going to be asking their parents
questions."

Larry Everest is the author of Oil, Power & Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda (Common Courage 2004), a correspondent for Revolution newspaper (www.revcom.us) where this first appeared, who has reported from Iran, Iraq and Palestine, and a (more...)